The National Assembly will speed up the adoption of the second urgent bill on energy competitiveness before the 30-day deadline expires; and for that reason, the Legislative Administrative Council (CAL) plans to meet this Friday to qualify the executive branch’s initiative and appoint a committee to process it.

The first legislative reactions to the Government’s initiative are openness and even support for accepting the proposal, although they warn that it will be well studied that the opening to the private sector for the production of electricity does not represent the privatization of that area.

Daniel Noboa’s new law proposes the introduction of free zones for electricity production and infrastructure

The proposal proposes the delegation, exceptionally, to private capital companies and national and solidarity economy companies, of participation in the activities of the public electric power service and public lighting service, through public selection procedures when the service cannot be provided by the public service. or mixed companies according to the needs and time required by the electrical system.

Also, the activity of electricity transmission at the national level can be carried out with the participation of private companies and national and solidarity economies.

Vice President of the Commission for Economic Development Blasco Luna (RC) predicted that the urgent project will go to the same table where the first urgent proposal of the Executive Committee was processed, and that in the first analysis carried out by his bench, they believe that new investments in the electrical sector are necessary, and who consider it positive to motivate the creation of free zones for the production of electricity, which would supply Ecuador with energy.

The red line for this political sector is that the project promotes the privatization of the electric power service, although there is talk of delegation, but this issue must be analyzed more deeply, he asserted.

The proposal, he said, talks about the forgiveness of debtors from electricity bills, and this must be transparent, because this information will be requested from those who would benefit from the forgiveness of interest, fines and surcharges in the energy sector, because it is unofficially known that companies that they don’t fulfill big obligations.

Considering the current situation of power outages in the country, Luna indicated that the project is a good alternative to avoid new power outages that have caused significant losses to traders.

Juan Carlos Camacho from the Construye movement said that his party will thoroughly study the proposal and define its vote, because it is time for Ecuador’s economy to be clean because it is a fantasy that is being lived here, since mining companies pay 3 cents per kw hour for electricity while the People pay 11 cents , therefore, we have to settle the accounts so that there is no shortage of money, because if we continue to subsidize all the powerful and exempt cheaters from taxes, we will never be better off.

Legislator Lucio Gutiérrez (PSP) announced that he would support the emergency project on energy competitiveness and recalled that he did not support the first emergency project on economic efficiency with his vote because it generates impunity because delinquent debtors who do not pay taxes are forgiven for the seventh time.

Let’s hope that there are no black things in the treatment and approval of this project, that there are no payments in exchange for impunity.

Government members were asked to comment on the content of the project, but they did not want to give their version in the Assembly.